When doctors in Warsaw asked a 59-year-old woman questions, she sometimes answered by singing religious songs. At other times, she broke into them on her own. The cause was a recurring brain tumor, and the singing faded each time surgeons cut the tumor back.
Her case, published in February 2026 in Psychiatria Polska, is one of the more unusual examples of a much larger idea: damage to specific parts of the brain can change religious and spiritual behavior. Researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital have tried to map where in the brain that happens, using data from nearly 200 patients with brain injuries.
